Piers Morgan Set for On-Air Revival With Trump Interview

Piers Morgan Set for On-Air Revival With Trump Interview
News personality to front new show for Fox Nation and News Corp’s new British TV venture
By Gareth Vipers
April 24, 2022 7:14 am ET

LONDON—News personality Piers Morgan is set to return to television screens Monday with a new show whose debut episode features an interview with former President Donald Trump.

The British journalist and broadcaster’s program, “Piers Morgan: Uncensored,” is set to air on Fox Corp.’s Fox Nation streaming services and News Corp’s new U.K. TV venture TalkTV.

The two companies in September announced that Mr. Morgan had signed a global deal to appear on outlets across Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, including TV and columns for the Sun and the New York Post newspapers.

Mr. Murdoch and his family are significant shareholders in both Fox Corp. and News Corp, which owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Murdoch is chair of Fox Corp. and executive chairman of News Corp.

Mr. Morgan has tweeted a trailer for the new show in recent days in which he puts to Mr. Trump that he lost the last election, before the former president ends the interview early and storms off the set.

Mr. Trump has denied that series of events. “Piers Morgan, like the rest of the Fake News Media, attempted to unlawfully and deceptively edit his long and tedious interview with me,” he said in a statement posted to his website.

“He wanted to make it look like I walked out on the interview when my time limit of 20 minutes went over by an hour,” Mr. Trump added.

Mr. Morgan has responded on Twitter that it was “a great interview” and that he loved Mr. Trump’s statements.

The addition of Mr. Morgan to the Fox Nation roster could bolster the direct-to-consumer business at a time of tough competition among streaming services. Fox Nation, which launched in 2018, has more than one million subscribers, the Journal has previously reported.

Rival CNN+ recently said it would shut down its operations just a month after it launched, a sign of new owner Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.’s lack of faith in the viability of a subscription-based stand-alone news platform.

In the U.K., Mr. Morgan’s show is the headline act for TalkTV, a new news and opinion channel backed by News Corp, which will be free to watch on various TV and streaming services. The launch marks the return of Mr. Murdoch to British TV broadcasting nearly four years after the sale of his 39% stake in U.K. pay-TV giant Sky PLC to Comcast Corp.

The channel enters a competitive British media landscape dominated by longstanding broadcasters, including the British Broadcasting Corp. and ITV PLC. Other presenters lined up for TalkTV include media personality Sharon Osbourne.

A spokesman for TalkTV didn’t respond to a request for comment on the launch.

Mr. Morgan said last month that he wanted his daily show, which will be broadcast from London, to be a “platform for lively vigorous debate” and to “annoy all the right people.”

The launch is an on-air revival for Mr. Morgan, a TV host, writer and editor whose winding career has included stops at tabloids newspapers and ITV in the U.K., and CNN and “The Celebrity Apprentice” in the U.S.

No stranger to controversy, Mr. Morgan abruptly left his last presenting role, on ITV’s daily magazine show “Good Morning Britain,” amid a backlash over his remarks about the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.

Mr. Morgan said he didn’t believe Ms. Markle’s comments about having suicidal thoughts, and he walked off the set after an argument with his co-hosts. He later said it “was not for me to question if she felt suicidal” but reiterated that he didn’t think she was credible.

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TalkTV - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0yTweyAa0PwEIp0l3N_gA

12am Petrie Hosken (Mon-Weds) James Whale & Darryl Morris (Thurs-Fri)
5am James Max
6:30am The Julia Hartley Brewer Breakfast Show (Mon-Thur) Jeremy Kyle (Fri)
10am The Independent Republic of Mike Graham
1pm Ian Collins
4pm Jeremy Kyle (Mon-Thurs) Rob Rinder (Fri)
7pm The News Desk, with Tom Newton Dunn
8pm Piers Morgan Uncensored
9pm The Talk, with Sharon Osbourne
10pm Daisy McAndrew (Mon-Weds)James Whale (Thurs-Fri)

Well, i actually subscribed to that channel .. I can't stand Morgan, but it looks like some interesting stuff there

I'd be interested in watching Sharon Osbourne. Anyone married to Ozzy must have a ton of good stories to tell.

Piers Morgan Finally Shows Unedited Clip Of Donald Trump Talk TV Storm-Off; Blames “Incompetent Aide” & A Trump “Simmering With Anger” But Reality Is Damp Squib
Max Goldbart
Tue, April 26, 2022, 1:53 PM

Piers Morgan has blamed an “incompetent” aide and a Donald Trump “simmering with anger” for the incident in which the former POTUS stormed off the set of Talk TV’s Uncensored, but in reality the episode was a damp squib. https://www.youtube.com/c/PiersMorganUncensored/videos

With viewers hanging on for 90 minutes across the first two episodes of Uncensored to discover how the interview really concluded, Morgan attempted to clear the situation by showing the concluding minutes of the interview uninterrupted and unedited.

Previous edited clips had caused two angry statements from Trump and led to frenzied speculation about what actually happened. Many reports had claimed the entire situation was manufactured in order to boost publicity to the new channel.

In reality, Trump left with little fuss after Morgan had stretched the interview from what was supposed to be 20 minutes to 70, leading a frustrated aide to call time on four occasions. Morgan attacked the aide on tonight’s show, calling him “incompetent.”

Trump was “simmering with anger about our confrontation over the rigged election and left very irritated,” according to Morgan, but the unedited clip showed Trump leaving frustrated but not storming off. He mumbled that Morgan was “dishonest” as he departed the set.

Here it is in full:



The incident was shown across the first two episodes of Rupert Murdoch’s Talk TV’s Uncensored and in clip form on numerous occasions to drum up interest.

The pair did clash over the election rig and Morgan said it was “unsubstantiated.”

Trump used the interview to tell Morgan he had “overreacted” when he himself stormed off the set of ITV’s Good Morning Britain last year after being challenged on his comments relating to Meghan Markle’s mental health, and he subsequently left that role.

Explaining the situation to Trump, Morgan said Markle had “written to my boss and demanded my head on a plate,” which he couldn’t abide by.

“I shouldn’t have walked off,” Morgan admitted, who compared the “censorship” situation to Trump being removed from Twitter. Trump has told Fox News he is “not going back to Twitter” when Elon Musk buys the company.

Earlier in the interview, Trump dropped one of the biggest hints yet that he will run for President in 2024, stating: “For reasons of campaign finance I can’t say but I think people are going to be very happy [with my decision].”

Trump also used the 70-minute chat to confidently explain the various ways in which he would have prevented recent dire world events.

Calling Putin a “genocidal monster,” Trump repeated claims that the war in Ukraine would never have happened had he still been leading the U.S. as the Russian leader believed the U.S. at that point “had more powerful ‘nukes’ than him.”

He also stressed the recent situation in Afghanistan would not have been the same if he’d still been in charge, decrying Joe Biden’s “incompetent withdrawal.”

The interview was interspersed with various rants by Morgan, who mostly raged against “cancel culture,” stressing the Uncensored mantra of “cancelling cancel culture.”

The first night was watched by an average of around 300,000 people, beating rivals BBC News, Sky News and GB News.